Joining the list of a slew of large-scale major industry events getting cancelled due to the coronavirus epidemic is the annual Game Developers Conference. GDC 2020 organisers penned out a blog post mentioning that they have decided to cancel the event after ‘close consultation’ with partners in the game development industry and community around the world.
The event, which was supposed to happen in March this year, has been cancelled. There could be a possibility of it happening later this year, with the organisers “fully intend to host a GDC event later in the summer”.
“Having spent the past year preparing for the show with our advisory boards, speakers, exhibitors, and event partners, we’re genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at this time.”, said the brief blog update.
As you’d know, GDC isn’t the only mega industry event that has been called off due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. The first of the lot to announce cancellation was the MWC, the biggest event for mobile and telecom industry globally. The cancellation would impact the Barcelona (the host city) economy by close to $500 million by some estimates.
Next in line was Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference, again called off owing to coronavirus outbreak. The company announced recently to cancel the in-person component of F8 2020. And to compensate the city of San Jose for the losses (FB donates a portion of ticket sales to organisations looking to diversify the tech industry), the company donated $850K, almost double of what it usually puts in through F8 ticket sales.
In place of the in-person F8 event, Facebook says it is planning other ways for our community to get together through a combo of locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content.
Just yesterday, the largest automotive trade show on earth, the Geneva International Motor Show was also cancelled by the organisers as the Swiss federal government banned any gathering involving more than 1,000 people.
